{"id":41980,"date":"2015-07-26T22:07:18","date_gmt":"2015-07-26T22:07:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=41980"},"modified":"2016-08-09T17:30:47","modified_gmt":"2016-08-09T17:30:47","slug":"hiding-black-behind-the-ears-on-dominicans-blackness-and-haiti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=41980","title":{"rendered":"Hiding Black Behind the Ears: On Dominicans, Blackness, and Haiti"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/gawker.com\/hiding-black-behind-the-ears-dominicans-blackness-an-1719940455\" target=\"_blank\">Hiding Black Behind the Ears: On Dominicans, Blackness, and Haiti<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/gawker.com\" target=\"_blank\">Gawker<\/a><br \/>\n2015-07-25<\/p>\n<p><strong>Roberto C. Garcia<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The first friend I made in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Elizabeth,_New_Jersey\" target=\"_blank\">Elizabeth, New Jersey<\/a> was a white kid named Billy. As a New York transplant my <em>Dominicano<\/em> look wasn\u2019t too popular with Jersey folk. I had an afro, wore dress pants, a collared shirt, and black leather shoes with little gold buckles. Most of the kids just wanted to know what my thing was. Billy and I couldn\u2019t have been more different, but we got close pretty quickly. Despite the fact that Billy\u2019s parents wouldn\u2019t allow him over my house, my grandmother allowed me over his. She took one look at Billy\u2019s blonde hair and blue eyes, and at his mother\u2019s middle class American manners, and pronounced their household safe. \u201cWhere are you from?\u201d Billy\u2019s mother asked, referring to my grandmother\u2019s heavy accent. \u201cI thought you were black.\u201d On that day I couldn\u2019t have imagined how many times I\u2019d have to answer that question in my lifetime. \u201cWe\u2019re <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/People_of_the_Dominican_Republic\" target=\"_blank\">Dominican<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A couple years later, when the neighborhood became predominantly Cuban, African American, and Haitian, Billy and his family moved away. My new best friend was black, and his mother wouldn\u2019t let him over my house either, on account of us being \u201cPuerto Rican.\u201d You can imagine our surprise when I returned with a similar story. My grandmother didn\u2019t want me over his house because they were black. We looked each other over. Two skinny round-headed, chocolate brown boys wondering what the hell each other\u2019s families were talking about. As far as we knew, we looked the same. My grandmother was just as black as Tyshaun\u2019s mother and I told her as much every time she chided me about playing with him. What was I missing?&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/gawker.com\/hiding-black-behind-the-ears-dominicans-blackness-an-1719940455\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hiding Black Behind the Ears: On Dominicans, Blackness, and Haiti Gawker 2015-07-25 Roberto C. Garcia The first friend I made in Elizabeth, New Jersey was a white kid named Billy. As a New York transplant my Dominicano look wasn\u2019t too popular with Jersey folk. I had an afro, wore dress pants, a collared shirt, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,395,8,20],"tags":[3468,15454,1062,20525],"class_list":["post-41980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-dominican-republic","tag-gawker","tag-haiti","tag-roberto-c-garcia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41980"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41981,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41980\/revisions\/41981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}